Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
OF THE 401( k)
H O W I N D I V I D UA L R E T I R E M E N T P L A N S A R E A
ROBERT HILTONSMITH
ABOUT DĒ MOS
Dēmos is a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization. Headquartered in New York City,
Dēmos works with advocates and policymakers around the country in pursuit of four overarching goals: a
more equitable economy; a vibrant and inclusive democracy; an empowered public sector that works for the
common good; and responsible U.S. engagement in an interdependent world. Dēmos was founded in 2000.
In 2010, Dēmos entered into a publishing partnership with The American Prospect, one of the nation’s premier
magazines focussing policy analysis, investigative journalism, and forward-looking solutions for the nation’s
greatest challenges.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute and Karen Ferguson of
the Pension Rights Center for their invaluable comments and suggestions. Tamara Draut, Lucy Mayo, and
John Winkel also made important contributions to the report.Design and Layout by Maxwell Hirsch.
Gina Glantz
Senior Advisor, SEIU MEMBERS, PAST & ON LEAVE
Amy Hanauer President Barack Obama
Founding Executive Director, Policy Matters Ohio Tom Campbell
Christine Chen
Stephen Heintz Juan Figueroa
President, Rockefeller Brothers Fund Robert Franklin
Charles R. Halpern
Sang Ji
Sara Horowitz
Partner White & Case LLP
Van Jones
Clarissa Martinez De Castro Eric Liu
Director of Immigration & National Campaigns, Spencer Overton
National Council of La Raza Robert Reich
Linda Tarr-Whelan
Rev. Janet McCune Edwards Ernest Tollerson
Presbyterian Minister
Affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.
Arnie Miller
Founder, Isaacson Miller
As with all Dēmos publications, the views expressed in
this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the
John Morning
Dēmos Board of Directors.
Graphic Designer
Wendy Puriefoy
President, Public Education Network
ROBERT HILTONSMITH
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary 1
Introduction 2
Overview: Types of Retirement Plans 4
Retirement Security’s Downward Spiral 6
The Winners and Losers in the New American Retirement System 10
A Risky Bet for Workers 13
The High Costs of Bad Retirement Policy 16
A Better Retirement for All: Policy Proposals 19
Conclusion 25
Endnotes 26
This report provides a picture of the current state of the U.S.’s private retirement system, and discusses why
that system needs reform.
55
rates. Among full-time employees, just 38.0
50
percent of Latinos, 54.4 percent of workers aged
45
25-43, and 38.4 percent of workers in the lowest
40
income quintile have access to a retirement plan.
35
• A description of the many risks to which
30
individual retirement plans expose workers. The
25
significant possibility of outliving retirement 1990 1995 2000 2005 2006 2007 2008
savings or losing them to a turbulent market, high
FULL TIME PART-TIME ALL WORKERS
fees, or poor investment decisions make 401(k)s
and other individual retirement plans unfit to be Source: Purcell, Pension Sponsorship
ROBERT HILTONSMITH 1
INTRODUCTION
This country was built on the hard work of Americans. Beginning with the creation of Social Security in
1935, we have, as a nation, honored that work with a commitment to security in retirement. Moreover, old
age security is a value we all share: we believe that a dignified retirement should be the right of all working
Americans. And for generations, we’ve moved closer to fulfilling that promise. Through a combination of
Social Security and private retirement benefits, over the past half century, elderly poverty has plummeted
while incomes of the aged have more than doubled. In the past few decades, however, we have begun to veer
away from this commitment to our shared values. If we stay the course, we’ll retire with less than our parents
and our children will retire with less than we did, reversing many of the gains of the past fifty years. This
decline, however, is not irreversible. With common sense policies we can restore our commitment to a secure
and dignified retirement for all American workers.
The retirement forecast for an average young worker today is much cloudier than it was a generation ago. A
worker hoping to retire in 20 or 30 years has a significant chance of being comparatively poorer in their old
age than his or her parents. Early baby boomers, or those retiring in the next ten years, can expect in their
retirements to subsist on 77 percent, on average, of what they earned during their peak working years; their
children, the “Generation Xers”, in contrast, will need to survive on just 65 percent of their peak earnings. To
i
put this in perspective, this means
RETIREMENT INCOME REPLACEMENT RATES
BY BIRTH COHORT that half of workers in each of these
generations will have to subsist
100 on less, a prospect particularly
ALL
MEN
$30,000 yearly during their working
60
WOMEN life, a retirement income of $19,500
50
EARLY BOOMERS LATE BOOMERS GENERATION XERS may very well mean forgoing many
(BORN 1946-1954) (BORN 1955-1964) (BORN 1965-1972)
comforts or even scrimping on basic
Source: “Retirements at Risk: The New National Retirement Risk Index” – CRR (2009) necessities.
There are many factors contributing to this predicted decline. Stagnant wages, rising prices of basic goods and
services, and shattered home values all point to a more unstable working life for today’s young workers and
consequently, a more uncertain old age than previous generations. In addition to these trends, a complete
upheaval of the private retirement landscape itself has taken place in the past few decades with the shift from
traditional pensions to individual retirement plans. This shift has perpetuated the low access to retirement
benefits present in the old system, but 401(k)s and other individual accounts come with additional drawbacks
for workers—higher risks and costs—that traditional pensions did not share. This combination of low access
to benefits with high risks and costs exposes the new mainstays of the contemporary retirement landscape,
401(k)s and similar plans, as inadequate and unsafe vehicles for workers’ private retirement savings.
i The replacement rate is the percentage of pre-retirement income that a retiree replaces, on average, while retired.
ROBERT HILTONSMITH 3
OVERVIEW: TYPES OF RETIREMENT PLANS
In the middle of the 20th century, retirement experts described the primary sources of retirement income—
Social Security, private pensions, and personal savings— as a “three-legged stool”: in an ideal retirement
system, all three would provide roughly equal income, and together the sources would form a stable base for
retirement.2 During that period, this metaphor was somewhat appropriate due to the relative generosity of
the private pensions then offered. Researchers and academics often call this type of pension a “defined benefit
plan”, but they are also known as “annuities” or simply “traditional pensions”, as they will be referred to in
this paper. Traditional pensions guaranteed workers a set yearly payment for the rest of their post-retirement
life. These pensions were mostly favorable arrangements for employees; the guaranteed income they provided
ensured a stable, low-risk retirement.
Employers, however, faced several drawbacks from traditional pensions. By promising their retirees a fixed
stream of retirement income, employers absorbed most of the risks and burdens that existed in any long-term
investment. So it was no surprise that when Congress created a legal, tax-advantaged means of saving for
retirement, employers readily adopted it. Commonly known as the 401(k) (after the section of the tax code
that authorizes them) these plans allow workers to defer income taxes on the portion of their salary they save
for retirement. These employer-based individual retirement plans, along with personal, non-employer-based
retirement accounts, can be collectively referred to as “defined contribution” plans since their balances at
retirement are determined by the frequency and size of the contributions to the plans (as well as the interest
rate on its investments), rather than by the pre-determined benefit formula of traditional pensions. However,
for simplicity’s sake, we’ll refer to this set of plans as “individual retirement plans”. Though these plans differ
in several meaningful ways, they generally share both the same basic features and severe drawbacks.
As most Americans in the workforce today know, the old three-legged stool, though never as stable as the
metaphor suggests, has largely disappeared. Individual retirement plans have largely replaced traditional
pensions as the standard source of private retirement benefits. The three modern sources of retirement
income—Social Security, individual retirement plans, and savings—have become far less stable and secure.
The retirement income of a traditional pension-less worker retiring today would be more adequately
described as a pyramid with three levels or tiers. Social Security comprises the base, and by far the largest,
tier. Individual retirement plans make up a smaller second tier and personal savings a tiny third tier at the
top. Far from equaling the stability of the three-legged stool, this new retirement pyramid is crumbling and
shaky. Many imminent retirees, who have only individual retirement plans to supplement Social Security, will
be worse off than their traditional pension-supported parents; many must continue working past age 65 to
maintain their accustomed standard of living. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, current
retirees rely on part-time earnings for over a quarter of their post-retirement income, a share over nine
percent larger than a generation ago. If we’re to reverse this trend of increasing old-age insecurity, we must
first understand how our once-stable retirement system crumbled so rapidly.
INDIVIDUAL RETIREMENT
TRADITIONAL PENSIONS 401(K)-TYPE PLANS
ACCOUNTS (IRAS)
Eligible workers at a private-
All workers at a workplace or
COVERAGE sector workplace or group of Any wage-earning American.
group of workplaces.
workplaces.
Tax-deductible, optional, by
Tax-deductible, mandatory, by Individual, elective, up to $5000.
employees, up to $16,5003.
employers. Sometimes “passed Tax deductible only up to an
CONTRIBUTIONS Employers may or contribute
on” to the employee in the form income threshold. No employer
up to a certain percentage of a
of lower wages. contributions, in most cases.
worker’s wages.
ii A summary of the most common types of retirement plans. Other individual retirement plans include profit sharing
plans, money purchase plans, Simplified Employee Plans, SIMPLEs, EXOPs and Keoghs.
iii Roth IRAs have a reverse taxation structure: contributions are taxed while withdrawals are tax-free.
ROBERT HILTONSMITH 5
SOURCES OF INCOME FOR RETIREES, AGE 65+, BOTTOM INCOME QUARTILE
EARNINGS 0.7%
PENSIONS 22.9%
PENSIONS 18.8%
The shift away from traditional pensions can be traced to a variety of factors: changing regulation, the sectoral
composition of the U.S. labor market, and decreases in union coverage and wages all contributed to their
decline. Since their introduction, restrictions on individual retirement plans have been consistently lifted,
ROBERT HILTONSMITH 7
while deliberately burdensome regulation of traditional pensions has steadily increased, in part to make
401ks more attractive than traditional pensions to employers.10
The decline in unionization of the U.S. workforce has contributed to the dramatic reconfiguration of the
private retirement system.11 This connection between unions and traditional pensions is clearly visible in
current access rates—68 percent of unionized workers in 2010 had access to traditional pension plans at
work, while only 16 percent of non-unionized workers did. Employees who belong to a union also have 22
percent higher access to a retirement plan of any sort, and participate in those plans 20 percent more often.
As union membership fell dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s, workplace access to traditional pensions also
precipitously dropped.12
Another trend driving the move away from traditional pensions has been the shift in the U.S. labor market
away from manufacturing and towards service industry jobs.13 As the manufacturing sector, which had high
rates of access to traditional pension, lost jobs to overseas competition in the 1980s and 1990s, the service
and information technology sectors, with much lower traditional pension access, grew enormously. The data
on current retirement coverage confirms this trend: 26 percent of production workers currently have access to
a traditional pension through their work, much greater than the slim 8 percent of service workers who do (see
Table 1 below).
The old private retirement system of traditional pensions was far from perfect—at its height, roughly the
same percentage of private industry workers had access to retirement benefits as today. However, traditional
pensions were better for workers in several important ways: they ensured that employers contributed to
employees’ retirement, and insulated those employees from a
Employers’ retirement con- variety of risks. With no contribution requirements, individual
tributions per worker fell retirement plans allow employers to contribute far less (or even
from an average of $2,140 in nothing) to workers’ retirements than under the old traditional
1981 to $1,404 in 1998 pension system. Employers’ retirement contributions per
worker fell from an average of $2,140iv in 1981 to $1,404
in 1998—a 34 percent decline.14 In addition, as we’ll explain in detail in the following sections, individual
retirement plans expose workers to many risks—market, investment, contribution, leakage, and longevity
risks—that were previously borne by employers under the old system. These risks, combined with the high
fees charged by the financial firms that administer individual retirement plans, combine to make these plans
unsuitable as the primary supplement to Social Security for income during retirement.
iv All figures comparing earnings or income of different generations have been adjusted for inflation.
The shift from traditional pensions to individual plans has significantly endangered the gains our country has
made in reducing old-age poverty since the introduction of Social Security. This shift is especially troublesome
because Social Security alone cannot meet the retirement needs of workers; it was never intended to be the
sole income source for the elderly. As Roosevelt said himself at the signing ceremony for the Act,
"WE CAN NEVER INSURE ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE POPULATION AGAINST
ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE HAZARDS AND VICISSITUDES OF LIFE, BUT WE
HAVE TRIED TO FRAME A LAW WHICH WILL GIVE SOME MEASURE OF PROTECTION
TO THE AVERAGE CITIZEN AND TO HIS FAMILY AGAINST THE LOSS OF A JOB AND
AGAINST POVERTY-RIDDEN OLD AGE."
The average Social Security retirement benefit is $1,182 per month15, and the median monthly benefit
for the lowest income quintile is just $750.16 The latter figure is below the federal poverty threshold of
$857.45 monthly, which has long been criticized by academics and the policy community as significantly
underestimating the true minimum income necessary for even the basics of life. And a significant proportion
of retirees—21 percent of retired couples and 43 percent of retired single adults—already rely on Social
Security for more than 90 percent of their income during retirement.17 Unless Social Security is expanded,
a retirement system that relies on Social Security to provide the majority of retirement income for seniors
would leave many seniors unable to meet even their basic needs.
In short, most workers need a supplement to Social Security to maintain anything close to the standard
of living they enjoyed pre-retirement. And, as we show in the following sections of this paper, individual
retirement plans are vastly inadequate to serve as this supplement. Their high fees, lower employer
contributions, and risky, complex investment options make them wholly unsuitable as the primary vehicle
for private retirement savings. Worse yet, a substantial portion of the workforce does not even have access to
them. As we detail the state of coverage and the risks and inefficiencies associated with individual retirement
plans, it becomes apparent that a new solution is needed to ensure the comfortable, secure retirement that
should be the right of all hard-working Americans.
ROBERT HILTONSMITH 9
THE WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE NEW AMERICAN
RETIREMENT SYSTEM
Overall, 59 percent of private industry workers have access to employer-provided retirement benefits of
any sort. The availability of private retirement benefits varies widely by nearly every conceivable category:
industry, race, income, employer size, and job status. For example, only 45 percent of workers in the service
industry, one of the nation’s fastest growing sectors, have access to retirement benefits, while 80 percent of
management and professional workers do. Similarly, while 84 percent of Americans in the highest income
quartile have access to retirement benefits, only 35 percent of the very lowest paid workers do. Clearly, our
current retirement system benefits some far more than others.
ACCESS BY INDUSTRY
Delving deeper into the current snapshot of private retirement, much of the variation in coverage between
different industries, company sizes, and ethnicities can be explained by lower unionization rates and lower
wages among these sectors, firms, and
TABLE 1. RETIREMENT BENEFITS:
PRIVATE INDUSTRY WORKERS, BY INDUSTRY ethnic groups. The service industry,
2009 which has both the lowest wages and
TAKE-UP
CHARACTERISTICS ACCESS PARTICIPATION
RATE*
lowest union coverage, and as a result,
MANAGEMENT, the least power to bargain for better
PROFESSIONAL, 80% 69% 87% benefits, has the lowest rate of access
AND RELATED
to benefits at 47 percent - nearly 50
SERVICE 45% 26% 57%
percent lower than the next lowest
SALES AND RELATED 67% 44% 66% sector. Production (i.e. manufacturing)
OFFICE AND workers, who have a relatively high
ADMINISTRATIVE 74% 60% 81%
union coverage rate, also have the
SUPPORT
second-highest access to traditional
NATURAL RESOURCES,
CONSTRUCTION, 68% 53% 79% pensions, the type most often
AND MAINTENANCE
collectively bargained for. Management/
PRODUCTION, TRANS- professionals have both the highest
PORTATION, AND 69% 53% 77%
MATERIAL MOVING average wages and also the lowest
Source: BLS, “National Benefit Survey,” 2009 unemployment rate, a result of high
* The take-up rate is the percentage of workers with access to retirement plans who demand for these educated workers. So
choose to participate in those plans.
it is unsurprising these they have the
highest retirement coverage, as employees must offer enticing benefit packages to attract quality employees in
this highly competitive sector.
Even for the two-thirds of the workforce fortunate enough to have access to retirement benefits at work, a
comfortable retirement is far from assured. Roughly half of the entire workforce, or 69 percent of workers
with access to benefits, have access only to an individual retirement plan and as data from the Employee
Benefits Research Institute shows, the balances in those plans are generally far lower than the amount
required for a prosperous old age.
$18,000
$17,909
jobs, etc.) but workers’ total retirement
$16,000 $15,246
savings are still inadequate. A worker
$13,493
$14,000 $13,038 $12,655
$11,600 $11,873
$12,810 $12,578
who makes the national median salary,
$12,000
$10,000 does not have a traditional pension,
$8,000 and saves the recommended amountv
$6,000
should have an account balance of
$4,000
$2,000 $45,000 by the age of 40, and nearly
$0 $250,000 by the age of 60.20 However,
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
according to 2007 data from the Survey
Source: “401(k) Plan Asset Allocation”, 2009 of Consumer Finances, the median
family whose head of household is age 35-44 has a total balance, over all their retirement accounts, of just
$36,000. Households approaching retirement are far behind, having saved, on average, $98,000. The numbers
clearly show that most participants are far behind in their retirement savings and consequently at risk of an
economically insecure retirement.
v The percentage of workers with access to retirement plans who participate in them
The financial crisis and following recession of the past few years has made the magnitude of the effect of
market risk on retirement savings crystal clear. During the stock market plunge of 2008 and 2009, individual
retirement plans lost a total of $2 trillion dollars in value,
A worker who retired at the while the average 401(k) participant lost over 1/3 of their
height of the last big stock mar- savings.21 This volatility in the stock market, in which the
ket surge in 2000 would have majority of 401(k) funds are invested, has an enormous
had over 50 percent more to live impact on both individuals’ lives and the economy as a
on during retirement than if she whole. Individuals who wish to retire during a market
downturn must either do so with significantly reduced
had retired in the depths of the retirement income or postpone retirement, which in turn
current recession last year. prevents younger workers from entering the labor force
and worsens the already high unemployment that accompanies such downturns. By our calculations, if our
hypothetical worker (as described on page 17) had retired at the height of the last big stock market surge in
2000, she would have had over 50 percent more to live on during retirement than if she had retired in the
depths of the current recession last year. To make matters worse, workers actually tend to increase their
retirement savings in response to a market crisis, a behavior which also deepens recessions.22
A more conservative investment strategy, including so-called “life-cycle investing, in which account
investments gradually become weighted more heavily towards low-risk assets as an investor ages, does
reduce some of the market risk, but it also reduces the potential rewards. The reward reduction is particularly
problematic for low-income workers, who are understandably more risk-averse. Life-cycle investing reduces
average 401k-type plan balances by over $300,000 (at retirement) over an all-stock strategy assuming
good returns, but reduces the losses for the unluckiest investors by only $40,000 in times of bad returns.23
Pooling retirement assets, for example, through a traditional pension, is a far more effective way to reduce
market risk; large pension funds can afford to invest less conservatively, and can achieve higher rates of
return. Traditional pensions can achieve the same level of retirement benefits at 46 percent lower costs per
participant , in large part due to higher returns on less conservative investments.24
LONGEVITY RISK
Participants in individual retirement plans are also exposed to longevity risk, or the possibility that they
outlive their retirement savings. Though there is widespread knowledge of increasing life expectancies, most
people underestimate their probabilities of living to a ripe old age.28 Individual retirement plans, which offer
only lump-sum retirement savings, require workers to accurately plan for the number of years of retirement
or risk years of relying solely on Social Security and, if fortunate enough, their families for support, a less-
than-ideal arrangement. An ideal retirement system, one where assets of savers were pooled and invested
jointly, would eliminate this risk, as the additional benefits paid to long-lived beneficiaries will be balanced by
those who have shorter-than-expected retirements. Participants in such plans can afford to save less, as they
will not need to individually hedge against the possibility of a longer-than-expected retirement.
LEAKAGE RISK
One seeming advantage of individual retirement plans is that they give participants control over their
accounts, allowing individuals to withdraw balances—or sometimes take out loans against account assets—to
pay for unexpected large expenses (health care bills, a down payments on a house, etc.) that everyone faces
in the course of their life. However, these withdrawals are themselves another risk, commonly referred to
as leakage risk, that can significantly reduce retirement plan balances at retirement. The GAO estimates 15
percent of participants in individual retirement plans either cashed out some or all of their assets or took out
a loan against the balance in 2006.29 Such withdrawals sapped nearly $84 billion from retirement accounts
that year, a number which surely rose during the recent recession. Because any retirement savings relies on
the long-term compounding of interest on investments, an early withdrawal or cash-out could effectively set
back an individual’s retirement savings by several years, which in turn could reduce the account’s balance at
CONTRIBUTION RISK
Finally, there is contribution risk. Simply put, contribution risk is the risk that workers contribute too little
to their retirement over the course of their lifetimes. Given that retirement income adequacy is already
threatened by the lower employer
AVERAGE PERCENT OF SALARY contributions that generally
CONTRIBUTES TO 401(K)S BY RACE
2001-2007 accompany individual retirement
plans, contribution risk is quite
9%
8%
significant, especially for low-
7% income workers. Even for those
6% fortunate enough to have access
5%
4%
to a retirement plan, take-up
3% ratesvi range from 45 percent
2%
of the very poorest workers to
1%
0%
90 percent of the richest. In
WHITE BLACK HISPANIC ASIAN addition, contribution rates—and
PERCENT OF SALARY consequently, account balances—
among participants are far below
Source: Munnell, Sullivan, “401k Plans and Race”, 2009
what is needed for a secure and
adequate retirement. Retirement account balances for participants of all ages average between 20 to 40
percent of the amount needed.31
Workers contribute too little to retirement plans for three primary reasons: either they’re simply not earning
enough, they don’t trust retirement plans and the financial markets in general, or simply don’t have the
financial literacy to understand how plans work or how much to contribute.32 Employees themselves believe
the first reason, lack of income, is the also the largest. In a 2007 poll commissioned by the Rockefeller
foundation, 56 percent of respondents said that the reason they were not saving for retirement was because
they couldn’t afford to save.33 Figures on contribution rates by race confirm this claim; those for Latinos and
African-Americans, who have lower average incomes, trail behind higher income whites and Asian-Americans.
Given that a majority of Americans believe that the current retirement system is worse than that of previous
generations and the inherent volatility of the stock market, this lack of trust is unsurprising and perhaps
warranted.34 A safe and secure retirement system would give workers confidence that their investments will
still be there for them at retirement.
vi The percentage of workers with access to retirement plans who participate in them
Over half of individual retirement plan assets are invested in mutual funds, which charge a variety of fees to
both employers and employees for their services. These fees, which range from charges for account auditing
and recordkeeping to levies for plan participant education and communication, are shared between employees
and employers. Employees, however, pay the largest of these fees: investment management charges for
investing plan participants’ assets. The fees, which on average range from 0.5 percent to 2.5 percent, are
taken “off the top” of the returns earned by the fund’s investments before compensating investors.35 In a truly
competitive market, the fees charged by these funds would decrease as the scale of the mutual fund market
grew. However, as the assets managed by the industry grew in 1999 to 21 times their size two decades earlier,
overall management fees rose 29 percent. This positive correlation between number of firms and average fees
flies in the face of the laws of standard microeconomics, suggesting that other factors must be preventing
market competition.
Why, then, have fees grown even as the industry should have been becoming more competitive? The answer
certainly does not lie in any connection between fees and performance: as mentioned above, many studies
have found no relationship between the two.36 Instead, the
Fees would have cost a worker answer to the mutual fund industry’s ability to charge high
retiring in 2000 at the height fees lies in standard economic theory. When consumers of a
of the stock market surge ap- product do not have enough information or education to choose
proximately $71,408 rationally among competing products, suppliers can charge
higher prices. And that’s precisely the story here: unincentivized
plan sponsorsvii, who shoulder only a small fraction of the costs, and undereducated plan participants often
do not choose wisely between often opaque and seemingly-identical mutual funds and plan providers. Plan
participants are at the largest disadvantage: they have only a menu of funds selected by their plan sponsors
to choose from, and very little information about how the fees the funds charge will impact returns, much
less what level of future returns participants can expect. Plan sponsors fare only slightly better. For many
employees in charge of retirement plans at small firms, their role as a plan administrator is only a small part
of their job responsibility. These sponsors are often not trained financial professionals, and so often do not
have the knowledge necessary to choose the best plan provider, or the best funds to include in their plan.
Between undereducated consumers and less-than-transparent disclosure of fees, mutual funds can essentially
vii The employee(s) at a firm responsible for choosing and overseeing the firm’s retirement plan provider.
To help spell out the necessities of any adequate retirement reform, Retirement USA, a coalition of
organizations (including Demos) concerned about the future of retirement in our country, has enumerated
twelve principles that any retirement reform should satisfy to be a sufficient replacement for the traditional
pension. Three of these are “core principles”, vital aspects of any retirement reform-- universality, security, and
adequacy. Given the current level of and political threats to future Social Security benefits, any implemented
reform must be universal: every worker should be covered by a retirement plan that supplements Social
security. In order for that account to be a secure place to save, the account must guarantee an income stream
for the lifetime of each retiree, such that no individual worker has to worry about outliving their retirement
savings or risk seeing their income vacillate with every financial market plunge. And to ensure that any policy
reform provides adequate income to meet a worker’s pre-retirement standard of living, both employers and
employees must be required to contribute to the account. Given falling wages and rising costs of essentials
such as health care, employers need to once again share the financial burden of workers’ retirements.
Despite the higher costs to employers from any mandated retirement contribution, employers have a stake
from retirement reform as well. Companies with individual retirement plans wishing to offer early retirement
are generally forced to come up with a large enough “retirement bonus” to entice workers to retire early; a
bonus which would likely have to be larger than normal to convince workers whose retirement plans have
been ravaged by falling share prices to retire during downturns. On the opposite side of the coin, older
workers with individual retirement plans tend to retire en masse during peaks in the market while their
retirement plan balances are at their peaks, making it even more difficult for employers to manage their
workforces. Additionally, many employers are in favor of reform. A new survey of employer retirement plan
administrators shows that nearly half are not satisfied with the current system.41 Of those surveyed, 56
percent of employers believe that their employees will not have enough retirement savings to maintain their
There have been several proposed policies to reform the retirement system in the past from all sides of the
political spectrum. Four proposals have received the most attention: The Urban Institute’s “Super Simple
Savings Plan”, the ERISA Industry Committee’s “New Benefit Platform for Life Security”, the Obama
administration’s “Automatic IRA” proposal, and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and Bernard Schwartz
Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School (SCEPA)’s “Guaranteed Retirement Accounts”42. These
proposals come from leading academic, policy and advocacy leaders and have all been evaluated in reports
from the GAO43 and the White House.44 All four proposals, summarized below, represent improvements
over the current retirement system: all would likely expand coverage to a portion of the 40 percent of the
workforce currently without access to a retirement plan. However, in our analysis, only one proposal—
Guaranteed Retirement Accounts-- satisfies all twelve reform principles outlined by Retirement USA and
could serve as a true successor to the traditional pension as workers’ second tier of retirement savings. The
three other proposals each lack several vital features or requirements that would ensure universal, secure, and
adequate retirement coverage.
In their attempt to fix the retirement security crisis, the Obama administration has proposed a voluntary
system of individual retirement accounts under which workers without access to a retirement plan through
their employer would be automatically enrolled in a Roth IRA with a default contribution rate of 3 percent.45
The “Automatic IRA” proposal also includes a government matching contribution of up to $500 and a default
investment mix for accounts. While the Auto IRA is a marginal improvement over the current system, the
plan does not fix any of its deep fundamental flaws. With no required employer contribution, the proposal
would (with a small assist from the government) still force workers to shoulder nearly the entire burden of
saving for retirement out of their wages, which have stayed stagnant or fallen for most while the costs of basic
living have risen enormously. In addition, by opting to use Roth IRAs as its vehicle for retirement savings,
the Auto IRA does nothing to moderate any of the drawbacks—the variety of risks, high fees, and confusing
investment options— of those plans that make them so unsuitable to be the primary supplement to Social
Security. The few steps to improve the current system—improving transparency of fees and investment
options and reducing conflicts of interest within the retirement sector—fall far short of the comprehensive
reforms necessary to transform individual retirement accounts into secure and adequate means for
retirement savings. The ERISA Industry Committee’s (ERIC) “New Benefit Platform” calls for competitive
independent benefit administrators to administer health and retirement plans, including both existing types
of individual plans (401(k)s, IRAs, etc.) and new types. The most comprehensive of these new types is the
Guaranteed Benefit Plan (GBP). The promising features of the GBP include benefits payable only as streams of
payments or annuities, investments protected against net losses, and a minimum investment credit for each
account.
UNIVERSAL COVERAGE. Every worker should be covered by a retirement plan in addition to Social
Security. A new retirement system should include all workers unless they are in plans that provide equally
secure and adequate benefits.
SECURE RETIREMENT. Retirement shouldn’t be a gamble. Workers should be able to count on a steady
lifetime stream of retirement income to supplement Social Security.
ADEQUATE INCOME. Everyone should be able to have an adequate retirement income after
a lifetime of work. The average worker should have sufficient income, together with Social Security, to
maintain a reasonable standard of living in retirement.
SUPPORTING PRINCIPLES
SHARED RESPONSIBILITY. Retirement should be the shared responsibility of employers, employees and
the government.
POOLED ASSETS. Contributions to the system should be pooled and professionally managed to minimize
costs and financial risks.
LIFETIME PAYOUTS. Benefits should be paid out over the lifetime of retirees and any surviving spouses,
domestic partners, and former spouses.
VOLUNTARY SAVINGS. Additional voluntary contributions should be permitted, with reasonable limits
for tax-favored contributions.
EFFECTIVE OVERSIGHT. Oversight of the new system should be by a single government regulator
dedicated solely to promoting retirement security.
The Super Simple Savings plan proposes a voluntary system of private individual retirement plans designed
to expand coverage and increase both employer and employee retirement savings. The Urban Institute’s
proposal contains many desirable features, including mandatory enrollment and employer contributions for
employees of participating employers, but lacks two important elements: mandatory employer enrollment
in the plan and investment options that eliminate investment risk. The Institute’s plan declined to require
employer participation because they were concerned that the overhead costs of participation would be overly
burdensome to small employers. Small businessesviii, however, employ around 27 million workers, or almost
18 percent of the labor force, and their employees are among the groups with the lowest coverage rates—46
percent lower than large employers.49 It is vitally important that any reform provide coverage to these
employees, who often receive lower wages and fewer benefits than those of large corporations. In addition,
Urban’s plan does not describe its exact investment scheme, but only notes that it will “provide simple, low-
cost accounts that deliver a high return to saving”. By leaving employees and plan sponsors to choose among
the same high-cost, indecipherable investment options that dominate the retirement landscape today, it
leaves workers vulnerable to the same risks as current individual retirement options: wildly varying returns
(and consequently, unpredictable retirement dates), outliving your retirement savings, etc. Any reform must
be both universal and minimize the risks to employees if it is to be fair and comprehensive.
Only the “Guaranteed Retirement Account” plan (GRAs) proposes a set of reforms that will create a universal,
secure, and adequate second tier of retirement security. GRAs ensure a such a retirement by covering all
workers, requiring both employer and government contributions, and guaranteeing a minimum return on
invested funds. By pooling assets and entrusting financial professionals to manage the fund’s investments
over a longer time period than could be considered by individuals, GRAs both minimize overhead costs and
investment fees and maximize returns. And by prohibiting account withdrawals and guaranteeing lifetime, set
payments at retirement, the plan ensures retirees an adequate, predictable stream of income, no matter how
long they live.
viii Defined here as businesses with less than $2.5 million in annual revenue
Guaranteed
Super Simple A New Benefit Plat-
“Auto IRA” Proposal Retirement
Savings Plan form for Life Security
Accounts Plan
White House Middle Class
CREATOR The Urban Institute ERISA Industry Committee EPI/Teresa Ghilarducci
Task Force47
System of private-sector
“benefit administrators” Government-administered Government-administered
PROPOSAL Simplified private-sector
providing both traditional clearinghouse for individual guaranteed individual retire-
DESCRIPTION individual retirement plan
pensions and individual retirement plans ment plans
retirement plans
at retirement in 17 out
$300,000 of the past 23 years. In
$250,000
fact, in only 3 of them,
$200,000
mostly during the dot-
$150,000
com-driven stock market
$100,000
$50,000 bubble of the late 90s,
$0 would a worker have ended
1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 up with a substantially
YEAR OF RETIREMENT higher (<$20,000) account
balance with a 401k. A
Sources: Department of Labor, “Study of 401k Plan Fees and Expenses” 1998, and Author’s Calculations
worker retiring in 2008
at during the depths of the recent market plunge, on the other hand, would have retired with over $60,000
more if they’d been able to save in a GRA. For most workers, especially those on the lower end of the income
spectrum, the predictability and security of the GRA makes it the superior choice for Americans’ retirement
savings.
ix 3 percent is the minimum return, but may return more, depending on investment performance.
2. Teresa Ghilarducci, When I’m 64: The Plot Against Private Pensions and the Plan to Save Them, Princeton University Press, 2008
3. Internal Revenue Service, “IRS Announces Plan Limitations for 2009,” October 2008, http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/
article/0,,id=187833,00.html
4. Internal Revenue Service, “Publication 590: Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)”, 2009, http://www.irs.gov/publications/
p590/
5. Laurence Kotlikoff and Daniel Smith, Pensions in the American Economy, University of Chicago Press, 1983.
6. Barbara Butrica et al, “It’s All Relative: Understanding the Retirement Prospects of Baby Boomers.” Center for Retirement Research,
2003.
8. David Bloom and Richard Freedman“The Fall in Private Pension Coverage in the U.S.”, American Economic Review, 1992.
9. Alicia Munnell “An Update on 401(k) Plans: Insights from the 2007 SCF”, Center for Retirement Research, 2009.
10. Barbara Butrica, Eric Toder, et al, “The Disappearing Defined Benefit Pension and its Potential Impact on the Retirement Incomes of
Baby Boomers,” Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 69 No. 3, 2009.
11. Ibid.
12. Gerald Meyer, “Union Membership Trends in the US”, Congressional Research Service, 2004.
13. Barbara Butrica, Eric Toder, et al, “The Disappearing Defined Benefit Pension and its Potential Impact on the Retirement Incomes of
Baby Boomers,” Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 69 No. 3, 2009.
14. Teresa Ghilarducci, When I’m 64: The Plot Against Private Pensions and the Plan to Save Them, Princeton University Press, 2008.
15. The Social Security Administration, “Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security, 2010, http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/
fast_facts/2010/fast_facts10.html#oasdi
16. Congressional Budget Office, “Long-Term Projections for Social Security,” 2009
17. The Social Security Administration, “Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security, 2010, http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/
fast_facts/2010/fast_facts10.pdf
18. Teresa Ghilarducci, Karen Richman, and Wei Sun, “Causes of Latinos’ Low Pension Coverage”, November 2007.
19. Employee Benefits Research Institute, “401(k) Plan Asset Allocation”, 2009
21. Monique Morrissey, “Toward a Universal, Secure, and Adequate Retirement System”, Retirement USA, 2009.
22. Teresa Ghilarducci and Eloy Fisher, Automatic Stabilization of Various Retirement Systems, SCEPA, 2010.
23. James Poterba et al, “Lifecycle Asset Allocation Strategies and the Distribution of 401(k) Wealth,” January 2006.
24. Beth Almeida and William Fornia, “A Better Bang for the Buck: The Economic Efficiencies of Defined Benefit Plans,” National
Institute on Retirement Security, August 2008.
26. William Dellva and Gerald Olson, “The Relationship Between Mutual Fund Fees and Expenses and Their Effect on Performance”,
The Financial Review, 1998.
27. Employee Benefits Research Institute, “401(k) Plan Asset Allocation”, 2009
28. Teresa Ghilarducci, When I’m 64: The Plot Against Private Pensions and the Plan to Save Them, Princeton University Press, p. 124, 2008.
29. Barbara Butrica et al, “Understanding Early Withdrawals from Retirement Accounts”, The Urban Institute, May 2010.
30. Author’s calculation from Alicia Munnell “An Update on 401(k) Plans: Insights from the 2007 SCF”, Center for Retirement
Research, 2009.
31. Monique Morrissey, “Toward a Universal, Secure, and Adequate Retirement System”, Retirement USA, 2009.
32. Julie Agnew et al, “Literacy, Trust, and 401(k) Savings Behavior,” Center for Retirement Research, April 2009.
33. The Rockefeller Foundation, “American Worker Survey: Complete Results,” 2007, http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/uploads/
files/1f190413-0800-4046-9200-084d05d5ea71-american.pdf
34. National Institute on Retirement Security, “Pensions and Retirement Security, Public Opinion,”, 2009
35. Edward Siedle, “Secrets of the 401(k) Industry,” 2004. As an example, if a fund has a fee of 2 percent and earns an 8 percent return
on its investments that year, the fund keeps the first 2 percent of the gross returns while the investor earns 6 percent. In other
words, the fee reduces returns by 25 percent.
36. Wilfred Dellva and Gerald Olson, “The relationship between mutual fund fees and expenses and their effects on performance,” The
Financial Review, 1998
37. Employee Benefits Research Institute, “Total IRA and 401(k) Assets,” 2009.
39. Beth Almeida and William Fornia, “A Better Bang for the Buck: The Economic Efficiencies of Defined Benefit Plans,” National
Institute on Retirement Security, August 2008.
40. In present value terms. See Schwarz Center For Economic Policy Analysis, “Calculating Retirement Tax Expenditures,” 2010, http://
www.newschool.edu/scepa/Making_Retirement_Work/Papers/Calculating%20Retirement%20Tax%20Expenditures.pdf
41. Daniela Arias and Teresa Ghilarducci, “Employers’ Stake in Pension Reform”, Schwarz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA),
2010.
42. See Government Accountability Office “Private Pensions: Alternative Approaches Could Address Retirement Risks Faced by Workers
but Pose Trade-offs,” 2009 for detailed descriptions. The Auto-IRA, while not contained in the GAO’s report, is nearly identical to
the “Universal 401(k)” proposal described.
44. Office of the Vice President, “White House Task Force Report on the Middle Class,” 2008.
46. A modified version of the table found in Government Accountability Office “Private Pensions: Alternative Approaches Could
Address Retirement Risks Faced by Workers but Pose Trade-offs,” 2009, p. 37.
47. Though the administration’s “Auto IRA” proposal has yet to be fully developed, it is extremely similar to the New America
Foundation’s Universal 401(k), Orszag/Urban Institute’s Automatic 401(k), among others.
50. See Teresa Ghilarducci, “Guaranteed Retirement Accounts: Toward Retirement Income Security,” Economic Policy Institute (EPI),
2007, http://www.sharedprosperity.org/bp204.html